My Exciting Life In ROCK (part 1): 14/8/99 - The Abbey Park Festival

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Music festivals are much like football teams - there's a few big ones that get all the attention, glamour, money and audience, and then there's hundreds of others that nobody apart from locals go to and the only outside players they can afford to hire in are those well past their best. This means they're usually full of heart, commitment and youth, but also slightly rubbish.

One such defiantly League Two outfit was Leicester's Abbey Park Festival, which fulfilled many different functions - it gave publicity to the historic Victorian park in which it was based, it allowed local people an entertaining day out, and it gave 95% of the bands in Leicester something to complain about for the rest of the year.

It's always the way with this sort of festival - there's so few slots to fill, and so many favours for the organisers to pay back in order to make it run at all, that unless you know someone running it you've got pretty much no chance of getting to play. When the very first festival was ever organised I'm sure the local pub was full of cavemen complaining bitterly into their fetid water that They Who Bang Stones only GOT to play because He Who Shouts Loudest used to go out with He Who Books The Catering, and even in the dim distant future Andrew Adventure And The Space Groovers will cry themselves to sleep because, yet again, they didn't even get a holographic reply to their 4-D Demo.

I know all this because I spent several YEARS whinging about never getting to play, and only DID get on the bill when I changed pubs to the one run by Sorted Supremo Dave Dixey, who booked his own stage. After a couple of years of this Dave realised the dark truth about bands: they're a tiny bit self-centred. Not me, obviously, I'm absolutely lovely and the very bluebirds sing my name from the trees, but most people in bands can't see past the end of their own nose and so, despite countless offers of help and support Dave always found himself doing everything alone. Having run the LollopaLeicester club together he asked me to help out - "How hard can it be?" I thought.

I soon found out, with MONTHS of attending meetings about toilets, filling in forms, and patiently explaining to bands that though we'd LOVE to have them on we only had so many slots to fill... which (I didn't say) I'd already given to my friends. HEY! I'm only human!

Come the day itself I found myself on site at SIX O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING digging trenches. I never realised before, but apparently the ONLY person legally allowed to dig all the trenches that connect the electrics between stage and sound desk is the stage organiser and, if there's two of them, it's the one who didn't do it last year. If you thought Sonic Youth curating All Tomorrow's Parties was an easy job, think again - I bet Kim Gordon was out first thing with a shovel, and Thurston Moore would have been up until all hours hoovering the saloon bar.

Being there that early presented one rather knotty problem: BEER. What with one thing and another it had arisen that me and my newly formed Validators would be "headlining" our stage - I say "headlining" because, really, we were just going on at 9pm when everybody would have gone home, so none of the other bands wanted to do it - so it was really REALLY important that I didn't get too drunk too soon. There were going to be eleven of us on stage for the performance and we'd only managed to have one practice (when it was pointed out more times than I'd've liked that there were more people in the rehearsal room than at ANY of my usual gigs), so I needed to be in control. "I'll not drink ANYTHING until 6pm!" I thought, STERNLY, to myself.

After an hour of trench digging I was KNACKERED, by 8am I'd been taught to use a walkie-talkie and signed a dozen forms which meant my ASS could be sued if there was a stiff breeze, by 9am I was GASPING for a pint and at 10.55am I found myself jumping up and down outside the beer tent knocking as hard as you can on canvas, DEMANDING BOOZE.

I had a thoroughly lovely afternoon, I must say. I staggered about smiling majestically at the bands, accepting their thanks for being booked, and waving gracefully at mystified punters. At one point I introduced Dalmatian Rex's attempt to do the shortest gig ever when, after a lengthy soundcheck and full introduction they ended up playing for less time than it had taken me to say their name. It was rather impressive, also BEAUTIFUL. I also, cleverly, had the Traditional Festival Jamaican Pastie to settle my stomach and keep my head together, washed down with a pint - I am NOTHING if not conscientious.

Things took a turn for the dangerous around tea-time, however, when it started to rain. Our stage was just a lorry with the side open, and its tarpaulin roof was only being held in place by a few scattered scaffolding poles. Johnny Domino [The Greatest Band From Derby Ever: FACT] were meant to be on next, but appeared reluctant to start. The wind had suddenly gotten up and blown things about, so an alarming amount of water was dripping down onto the stage, which seemed to be bothering them unduly, I thought. "It's only a bit of rain", I said. "Yes," said Steve Domino, "But it's pouring directly into all of our electrical sockets. Are you insured for one of us BEING KILLED?"

Lightweights. I magnanimously assured them that I would personally fix it, and was pleased to find a ladder propped against the side of the lorry. By this time the rain was sheeting down, and as I clambered up I heard the start of distant thunder - this bothered me not at all, as I am INCREDIBLY BRAVE. That's the ONLY reason I cared naught for my own safety, and is probably also why it took me several minutes to get up the ladder. Things get a bit giggly when you're being COURAGEOUS.

Once on the roof I noticed that some of the scaffolding poles had rolled into the middle of the tarpaulin and were creating a puddle, so I skedaddled through it to moved them back into place. I had to be quite careful as it wasn't very stable up there, but managed to stride over and lift one of the ten foot poles up above my head, ready to shift it. At this point I looked over the side of the lorry and noticed that quite a crowd had gathered. "They must be about to start", I thought, "I wonder why they're looking up at me instead of the band? I'll give them a wave."

Some hours later I'd wake with a START and realise that I'd been stood in a puddle on top of a lorry in the middle of a flat park, gleefully waving a ten foot metal pole in the middle of a lightning storm, shouting "I DEFY YOU AGELESS ELEMENTS!" but at the time I just wondered what everybody was looking so upset about.

The rest of the day carried on fairly normally, except for a massive riot at about 8pm when the police had to be called to stop people chasing each other with huge lumps of burning wood, all of which I found TERRIBLY amusing. "It's like Altamont!" I shouted into my walkie talkie. "PLEASE GET OFF THE LINE" said everybody else.

By nine o'clock everything had calmed down, to such an extent that there was about twice as many people on stage for our headline set as there were in the audience... and that was at the start. By the end I believe there were ELEVEN times as many people on the stage as watching us, and Dave was only there because he had to make sure the electrics were switched off when we finished. My main memory of the gig itself is looking round and thinking how nice it was to have so many friends with me there, and constantly being surprised by the fact that they were either GLARING at me because I'd forgotten to start singing, or BEGGING with their eyes to be allowed to finish early and go to the pub.

It was a lovely day, although next morning was rather less so. I knew I shouldn't have eaten that pastie.

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